Families, Welcome Back to San Diego Unified from Superintendent Fabi Bagula, Ph.D.
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Hello San Diego Unified families,
This is Fabi Bagula, your superintendent.
I hope your summer was filled with rest, joy, and time with those you love.
It brings me great joy to welcome you to the 2025–26 school year on Monday, August 11.
This summer, I was honored to be named your permanent superintendent.
This district is where I began my teaching journey, and it is where my heart remains.
My focus is on putting students first in every decision—through academic excellence, wellness, and stronger partnerships with you, and our communities.
While you recharged, we were preparing for your student’s return—getting buses ready, updating school menus, delivering new athletic equipment, and ensuring every campus is ready to inspire.
This summer, our teachers also dove into professional development for our new math curriculum, Eureka Math2, for grades TK through 5 to align with California’s standards.
This curriculum helps students build a deep understanding of math—so they don’t just memorize steps, but truly understand how and why math works, ensuring every student builds strong problem-solving skills.
We made this change because our students deserve the best.
We also adopted important new policies.
Our updated Restorative Discipline Policy provides clearer behavior guidance, stronger consequences for serious issues, and more tools for healing and prevention.
And our new phone-free school day policy, developed with families and students, creates learning spaces that support focus, connection, and balance with technology.
We know phones play a role in daily life. That is why the policy allows for flexibility during emergencies, for medical needs, and when used for instruction—because it is about balance, not restriction.
This school year we are also launching new tools—like an Attendance Module and a College & Career Readiness Dashboard—to help you monitor your student’s progress, stay informed and continue to be engaged in your child’s educational journey.
Another area where we have been putting in the work over the summer is how we as a District better communicate with you, and your students.
We have reorganized the SanDiegoUnified.org homepage to help you easily find the latest district updates by your child’s grade level—these updates will also be available on school websites.
Our weekly district family newsletters will now give you more of what you need—more helpful information and more focused content involving the area where your child’s school is located.
Another new communication tool I am really excited about are our new Canvas Informational Classrooms. If you have a student in high school, we will regularly provide useful info about scholarships, assessments, health-related news, and lots more – all of which will be easily accessible to your student and you through their chromebook.
And finally, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the division we see across our nation. Like many of you, I carry political complexity—and I remember a time when we could discuss policy differences with respect and curiosity, not hostility.
That is why efforts like San Diego Unified for Democracy matter. We launched it a couple years ago to help our students—the future voters in our classrooms—understand how democracy works.
From there, we created the Protecting Our Students information campaign, recognizing that many of our core values could face scrutiny. And now, we are launching the next phase: Community Care.
This isn’t about politics. It is about preparing students to think critically, engage respectfully, and understand the responsibility we have for one another. Students are returning from summer having consumed media—some with questions, some with fear.
Our job as educators isn’t just to prepare students for exams. It is to prepare them to lead in a diverse, democratic society. That means modeling compassion, creating spaces of belonging, and helping every student know they are seen, supported, and empowered.
So as we begin this school year, I want to say thank you.
Thank you for being our partners.
Thank you for your trust.
And thank you for all you do to support your child’s learning and growth.
We are excited to see what our students will accomplish this year.
We can’t wait to welcome them back on Monday, August 11th.
Thank you